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Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

‘Call him,’ Elin urges.

Fingers fumbling, Isaac dials. ‘It’s not even ringing. He’s switched his phone off.’

Her stomach pitches. ‘We need to find him. You want to try his Airstream first?’

Isaac nods, his face grey. ‘It’s probably the best place to start.’

Grabbing their bags, they leave some money on the table and head out onto the street.

As Isaac weaves through a group clustered outside the shop ahead, Elin’s mind is already chasing over possible scenarios. Not one of them sees this ending well.

It takes them over half an hour to reach the plateau where Steed’s Airstream is parked.

Elin pounds into the clearing, struggling to catch her breath. They’d barely stopped on the way up the trail from town, and she’s feeling it. Total exhaustion. Her legs are heavy, thick with lactic acid, a dull throbbing in her rib.

Waiting a moment for her breathing to come under control, Elin looks around with trepidation. Everything’s silent, still. All she can hear is the sound of the wind, ruffling the trees. ‘Want to try knocking?’

Isaac nods.

‘Steed?’ Elin calls, walking closer. ‘You there?’ She loudly raps on the door, raising her voice. ‘Steed?’

No answer.

Elin knocks again, waits, her breathing still ragged.

Nothing.

‘Maybe try round the back?’

Together, they move around the perimeter of the van, trying to peer through the windows, but all the curtains are drawn. ‘Looks pretty dead,’ Isaac murmurs. ‘Don’t reckon he’s in there.’

Elin nods, feeling a rising sense of panic. ‘I’ll take a look over here.’ Walking forwards into the long grass at the back of the van, she scopes out the space around her. It’s even wilder than the woodland backing onto their van. Nothing but trees for miles, towering pines and thick underbrush.

‘Steed,’ she calls, delving deeper into the grass, but nothing comes back in return, only the faint stirring of the breeze.

‘We’re not going to get any joy out here. Let’s try and get inside.’

Elin jogs back around to the front of the van, Isaac behind her. Moving closer to the door, she reaches for the handle. ‘It isn’t even locked,’ she says, pushing it open.

Inside, she’s barely taken a step forwards before she stops, frozen in position.

‘Shit.’ Clamping her hand to her mouth, she’s struck by the stale sour smell. The rancid scent of body odour.

Isaac swears under his breath .

It’s a mess.

Clothes strewn everywhere. Half-drunk coffees, growing cold on the surface, filthy plates lying unwashed in the sink.

But it isn’t that which gets her: it’s the paper.

Sheets of it littering every surface inside the van – tacked to the wall, lying scattered on the floor.

A prickle of fear. ‘Guessing this is why he didn’t want you to come inside when you had that chat … ’

‘Yeah.’ His voice wavers. ‘What’s he been doing in here?’

Grabbing a couple from the counter, Elin starts reading. At first, the notes look similar to the ones she’d made about Kier’s disappearance, as if Steed’s been trying to make sense of what’s going on, but they quickly descend into nonsense, the words scrawled and illegible.

‘The same as us from the looks of it,’ she says. ‘These are notes about Kier.’ But as she bends down to pick up a few pieces of paper from the floor, Elin realises she’s missed something: the word ‘camp’ written on some of the pages. The word has been underlined several times, written over to give it more emphasis.

‘He’s written stuff about the camp on these. None of what he’s noted down around it is very readable, but he’s clearly been focusing on it. Maybe—’ she breaks off, her eyes alighting on a notebook near the sink. Picking it up, she starts flipping through it. It’s blank on the first few pages, but then she sees the photographs.

Polaroids.

Different backdrops, but all versions of the same thing.

‘These are photos of Ned.’ Elin’s gut lurches. ‘I reckon that’s where he is. He’s gone down there, to the camp.’